Someone writes: "We all are God-seeking, whether we admit it or not. Someone said that there are no atheists in fox holes. The proof for God's existence is all around us."

They're always saying that about us. I wish they would stop; it's simply not true. Please do not presume to know what I am thinking or what my motives are. Only I can do that. And I say that I am not seeking any "God"; mine is the final word on that matter.

Thus, people like myself need to organize in order to protect ourselves from theists' inexplicable compulsion to enforce their beliefs on us and to make us live as though these beliefs were actually true. To us, all this talk about gods and the supernatural is a bunch of hooey, and we wish they would leave us alone. But they don't.

Atheism (a theism) means "no theology" or "no god." There is no god in the same sense that there is no tooth fairy. That quarter under my pillow came from somewhere else; it did not come from the tooth fairy. However, nobody ever got burned at the stake for saying "there is no tooth fairy." No child was ever forced to stand in front of a class and "talk" to the tooth fairy (like I was made to "talk" to the Christian-Science god when I was a child in a California public school in 1966).

Whoever told you there are no atheists in foxholes was pulling your leg. I know from first-hand experience that people face death every day without the aid of comfortable myths. Throughout the ages, we have faced indescribable brutality at the hands of those who do not understand our beliefs. People also lay down their lives for a greater cause (like my Colonial-American ancestors did -- specifically for the right to avoid confessing Christianity) while at the same time holding firmly to the belief that there is no afterlife or "heaven" (such as has been taught in my family for generations).

Although teaching about "heaven" and "hell" cannot be tested, I do know it is suspect because we hear it only in books like the Bible and the Koran. The Bible and the Koran both make claims that can be tested. When we compare what these writings say about observable life with what we have observed about our world, we can clearly see that the Bible and the Koran are wrong about many things. If these books are wrong about things I can test, why should I accept their word on matters that cannot be tested?